Knowing What to Say
by BonesBird
Summary: B'Elanna is there for Tom when he realises Miral is getting too old for him to be her saviour. She always knows what to say to help him through.


**Title: Knowing What to Say  
Summary: B'Elanna is there for Tom when he realises Miral is getting too old for him to be her saviour. She always knows what to say to help him through.  
Lyrics: Slipping Through My Fingers - ABBA**

**This was very strangely inspired, but I'm glad it came together. It's kind of inspired by a scene from Scrubs (in the season 8, I think, where Jordan sits beside Cox and tells him that he'll be there for Jack's next story), and my own recent experience where the Ginge told me she was "too big" to be helped (she's 4). As always, read and review. Hope you like.  
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**And, for those of you who read "I Have A Story..." I'll be updating that tomorrow now I'm all caught up writing them. I'm fairly sure I wrote the 200th Drabble tonight.  
**

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_**The feeling that I'm losing her forever  
And without really entering her world  
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter  
That funny little girl**_

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"I don't matter you know. I'll never matter." The little girl looked at him, and he felt his heart breaking just a little. She thought she didn't matter. She thought that she wasn't worth anything, all because a couple of girls in her class teased her about her heritage. He tried to cajole her into cheering up, he tried all the stories she loved, but nothing was bringing her out of her melancholy mood. When she fell asleep he left the room, only to find his wife sat on the corridor outside the door.

"No luck?" she asked, leaning back against the wall. Watching him with those tired eyes she'd developed since Miral's birth when she worked too hard. Always worrying about something, her mind was always whirling with ideas. He sighed and braced himself against the wall for a moment, letting his frustration out.

"I found out why she's so down. She's being bullied at school" he sighed and shook his head, knowing what B'Elanna would say, he had been thinking it a lot while he'd been sat listening to Miral talk about school. He wanted to hold her, but she had just told him that she'd do it her own way.

"She'll get over it in time Tom, she will" B'Elanna shocked him with her statement, he just looked at her and shook his head. Then dropped his chin to his chest, feeling defeated.

"I sat in there with her tonight, and wonder if you were right all along." He whispered one of the hardest things he'd ever said. He had fought so hard against her right at the beginning, when they had first found out Miral. It had put a strain on their marriage like nothing else. He had thought at the time that she had been completely wrong. Miral would be perfect the way she was, and she was, but he had known that B'Elanna had been bullied horribly in school, and the fact that their daughter was going through it as well cut him in half. He was on the verge of explaining his stance when he felt her hands gently gripping his.

"I wasn't, Tom. I wasn't" she sighed and pulled him to sitting beside her, gripping his hands tightly "I look at Miral, and I see the best of both of us, the same with Owen. They are perfect." She smiled at him, in the honest way she always had. Her clam and conviction that their children were perfect didn't completely settle his mind.

"She's in so much pain" he said, the only thing he could think of, and while she was in pain he was too, and he knew in her way B'Elanna would be as cut that Miral was suffering as he was, but she had the first-hand experience he lacked. Sure he had been teased in school, for his haircut, for his absent father, for his older sister, never anything as serious as this, and not so young.

"She's seven years old, this is just the beginning. She's getting too big for you and I to swoop in and save her from heartache" B'Elanna tutted, and he turned his head and looked at her properly for the first time since sitting down next to her.

"Maybe I'm just not ready for my baby girl to grow up. It feels like only yesterday Harry and I were doing Captain Proton missions with her in a sling" He laughed and threaded his fingers through B'Elanna's, shaking his head. "I feel like she doesn't need me anymore."

"You still have Owen" she cocked her head to the same angle she used whenever she was pointing something out to him. He chuckled a little, shaking his head and kissing her knuckles.

"It may sound sexiest, but Owen's a boy. It's your job to coddle him, and in five years, when he's going through his first major heartbreak, I'll be here to remind you of your words" she playfully slapped his arm before looking thoughtful for a few minutes.

"I probably have ten years. Boys solve things with fights until they are at least twelve" He thought back to his own childhood, and realised that was probably true. At least it had been for him. He'd always been in a fight of some sort. All the way up until he'd met her. Suddenly, she sprung up, far faster than he would be able too, and tugged his arm. "Come on, let's go to bed before one of them wakes up."

"You always know what to say" He laughed, and cast one final look at his little girls' room, feeling completely at a loss to help her, but between them, he was sure B'Elanna and Miral would figure out a way to teach the bullies to leave her alone. They were good at that, and he wouldn't have his family any other way.


End file.
